-
Apr 3, 1541
War Powers Act
It is a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The Resolution was adopted in the form of a United States Congress joint resolution. It provides that the U.S. President can send U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, "statutory authorization,". -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. A term symbolizing the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. -
Baby Boom generation
Baby boomers are the demographic group born during the post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. This includes people who are between 53 and 71 years old in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. However, according to the Strauss–Howe generational theory, baby boomers are defined as people born between 1943 and 1960, which would include people who are between 57 and 74 years old in 2017. -
Cold War
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its satellite states) and powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others). Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. -
Levittown
Levittown is the name of seven large suburban developments created in the United States. Built after World War II for returning veterans and their new families, They were guaranteed by the Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) that qualified veterans could receive housing for a fraction of rental costs. -
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. In the period known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1947 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression as well as a campaign spreading fear of influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. For many Americans, the most enduring symbol of this “Red Scare” was Republican Senator Joseph P. McCarthy of Wisconsin. -
Containment Policy
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Airlift was in 1948–1949. At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning April 8, 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous once more, and prevent the spread of communism. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947. And further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO’s essential purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of its members through political and military means. An alliance of countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goals of the North Atlantic Treaty signed on 4 April 1949. -
Domino Theory
The domino theory, which governed much of U.S. foreign policy beginning in the early 1950s, held that a communist victory in one nation would quickly lead to a chain reaction of communist takeovers in neighboring states. In Southeast Asia, the United States government used the domino theory to justify its support of a non-communist regime in South Vietnam against the communist government of North Vietnam. Its increasing involvement in the long-running Vietnam War (1954-75). -
1950's Prosperity
The economy overall grew by 37% during the 1950s. At the end of the decade, the median American family had 30% more purchasing power than at the beginning. Inflation, which had wreaked havoc on the economy immediately after World War II, was minimal, in part because of Eisenhower's persistent efforts to balance the federal budget. Except for a mild recession in 1954 and a more serious one in 1958, unemployment remained low, bottoming at less than 4.5% in the middle of the decade. -
Korean War
The Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. -
Rosenberg Trail
Julius Rosenberg was arrested in July 1950, a few weeks after the Korean War began. He was executed, along with his wife, Ethel, on June 19, 1953, a few weeks before it ended. The legal charge of which the Rosenbergs were convicted was vague: “Conspiracy to Commit Espionage.” -
Rock n' Roll
It is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is from musical styles such as gospel, jazz, boogie boogie, and rhythm and blues, and country music. While elements of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s. -
Beatniks
Beatnik was a media stereotype prevalent throughout the 1950s to mid-1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s. Elements of the beatnik trope included pseudo-intellectualism, drug use, and a cartoonish depiction of real-life people along with the spiritual quest of Jack Kerouac's autobiographical fiction. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
He was an American politician and Army general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. In 1951, he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO. -
Jonas Salk
He was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. -
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office. He had previously served as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and prior to that as a U.S. Representative and also Senator from California. -
Ray Kroc
Raymond Albert Kroc (October 5, 1902 – January 14, 1984) was an American businessman. He joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. Kroc was included in Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century, and amassed a fortune during his lifetime. -
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following World War II, aided by captured German missile technology and personnel from the Aggregat program. -
G.I. Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act 1944)
It was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans. It was designed by the American Legion, the goal was to provide immediate rewards for practically all World War II veterans. Benefits included dedicated payments of tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college or vocational/technical school, low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, as well as one year of unemployment compensation. -
Interstate Highway Act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act was enacted, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. With an original authorization of US$25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System supposedly over a 10-year period. It was the largest public works project in American history through that time. -
Sputnik
The Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. -
Bay of Pigs
On January 1, 1959, a young Cuban nationalist named Fidel Castro (1926-) drove his guerilla army into Havana and overthrew General Fulgencio Batista, the nation’s American-backed president. For the next two years, officials at the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to push Castro from power. Finally, in April 1961, the CIA launched what its leaders believed would be the definitive strike. -
John F. Kennedy
Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to hold that office. As president, Kennedy confronted mounting Cold War tensions in Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. He also led a renewed drive for public service and eventually provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
It was a 13-day (October 16–28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. John F. Kennedy was the president when this occurred. -
Betty Friedan
She was an American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States. In 1963, her book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now fully equal partnership with men." -
Lyndon B. Johnson
He was the 36th president of the United States, assuming the office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Prior to serving as Kennedy's vice president, Johnson had long represented Texas in the United States Senate. Johnson inherited Kennedy's foreign policy and most of his advisers. Believing he was carrying out Kennedy's legacy, Johnson massively escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. -
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed. It gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. The resolution authorized the President to do whatever necessary in order to assist "any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty". -
Tet Offensive 1968
It was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. -
Vietnamization (1968)
President Richard Nixon (1913-94) introduced a new strategy called Vietnamization that was aimed at ending American involvement in the Vietnam War (1954-75) by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. he increasingly unpopular war had created deep divisions in American society. It would prepare the South Vietnamese to take responsibility for their own defense against a Communist takeover and allow the U.S. to leave the conflict with its honor intact. -
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
The HUAC was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security". When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee. -
Moon Landing
A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned (robotic) missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969. -
26th Amendment
The voting age in America from 21 to 18 began during World War II and during the Vietnam War, when young men denied the right to vote were being conscripted to fight for their country. Amid increasing support for a Constitutional amendment. Congress passed the 26th Amendment in March 1971; the states promptly ratified it, and President Richard M. Nixon signed it into law that July. -
Anti-War Movement
An anti-war movement is a social movement. It is usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. -
Vietnam War
It was a war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955, to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies and the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. -
Rust Belt vs Sun Belt
The decline in the factories, the high unemployment, and the shift away from industrial production earned this region the nickname the Rust Belt. There is no specific, exact geographical boundary for the Rust Belt; it simply describes the northern/Midwestern industrial areas that fell into sharp decline after World War II.
